


i get it all wrong

by perfectpro



Series: you were not the dreamer (you were just the dream) [2]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 2017-2018 NHL Season, Established Relationship, F/M, Kid Fic, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-10 03:15:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12902757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectpro/pseuds/perfectpro
Summary: The house in Vegas has all of the sounds he's grown used to but none of the familiarity, and the house in Pittsburgh feels right but doesn’t sound that way anymore and Sid can’t help but feel like it’s never going to feel right.This is their new reality, though, his family thousands of miles away, leaving Sid alone in the city he thought he’d made a home in.





	i get it all wrong

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Sufjan Steven's _John My Beloved_ which basically hurts and heals me all at once. The secondary title of this work, if it had one, would be I Get By (With A Little Help From My Friends).

The silence that stretches over the phone line is unable, traveling the distance across the country as Sidney waits to hear the news. He repeats himself, asking, “How bad is it?” The answer is already partially answered by the fact that Flower didn’t make the call himself.

Vero stays quiet a moment, holding her breath and then trying to avoid it as best she can by answering, “He hasn’t been diagnosed.”

Sid closes his eyes, wishes he could see her. More than that, he wishes that he was with them, in Vegas, able to be with Vero and hold her and help Flower as best he can. “If he didn’t go to practice today and it wasn’t an optional skate…” It’s as good as her coming out and saying it, but he knows that she won’t until there’s been an official diagnosis. “Where is he?”

It’s too warm in Pittsburgh, the kind of heat that shouldn’t survive into October. He should go back inside to the air conditioning, but Geno and Tanger will ask, not to mention the other guys, and Sid doesn’t know if he can talk about it right now. Not when the thought of Flower being concussed hurts like and old wound that never really healed, the very thing that put him in Vegas in the first place.

“I took him to the rink. He’s seeing the doctor now,” Vero answers finally, and it’s impossible to mistake the waver in her voice for a bad connection or anything other than the fear that it is, the fear that Sid feels in himself superimposed onto her. “He didn’t want me to stay.”

It isn’t unusual. Marc-Andre has always been intensely private about injuries, about his hockey in general, and there were many times where he wouldn’t say anything only for Sid to find out along with everyone else on the team. Vero is slightly more used to it than he is, isn’t as hurt that it’s something Flower wants to distance them from. Still, Sid wants to do something, wants to be anywhere but alone, wants to be able to drive home with Flower and Vero and hopefully hear good news or at least be there with them so they don’t have to deal with this on their own.

It’s almost definitely going to be bad news. Missing a non-optional practice doesn’t leave room for much else. Sid saw the hit, saw Mantha’s knee go up, had to calm himself down before calling Flower last night.

Marc-Andre had laughed about it, but he’d sounded a little off-kilter and quieter than normal. He’d ended the conversation early, saying how tired he was and passing the phone off to Vero without much fanfare.

There’s some muffled conversation on Vero’s end, and Sid strains his ears to pick anything up, but someone must be covering the mouthpiece. Vero says suddenly, “I’ll let him tell you,” and Sid’s stomach sinks.

“Concussion, I’m on IR until further notice,” Flower announces, and the words come out sounding mechanical. 

Sid bites back everything he wants to say, which is that Flower should follow the doctor’s orders, make sure they check for neck injuries, try blackout curtains, and download an app to dim his phone screen even further. He already knows those things, of course he does, because he was there through Sidney’s big concussion and has had enough of his own. He asks instead, “Do you want me to come out there?”

After the game tonight, he can get on the next flight to Vegas and still be in New York by Tuesday afternoon. Not ideal, and he’ll miss practice, but doable all the same.

Flower snorts, derisive and immediately dismissive, not even taking it into account. “You have a game tonight, you have a game Tuesday. I’m out for at least a week, maybe we’ll just come see you.” He sounds bitter, and Sid can’t blame him, feels pity well up within himself that he squashes as soon as he realizes, knowing that it won’t help.

He’d love to have them back. There isn’t much that Sid wouldn’t do to get them back, to have Flower wearing the right combo of black and gold on the ice again. Flower knows that, of course he does, and Sidney doesn’t know how repeating the same thing is going to make anything better. “Focus on getting better, on going to the doctor. Do you want me to ask Vyas to send your records over?” he asks finally, trying to think of anything he can that might help. 

There’s a hollow sounding noise, and Sid hears Vero’s voice near the receiver but can’t make out what she’s saying. 

“They already have my records. Don’t worry about it, Sid. I’ll tell you when we know what the plan is,” Flower responds, and there’s a thread of bitterness through the words that Sid wishes wasn’t so familiar. 

Sid wants to say something else, like a concussion spotter should have pulled him off the ice instead of letting him play it out. Or that he’s sorry, he’s so fucking sorry. He wishes he was there with them, and he always wants that but now more than ever. The number of things to say are overwhelming, though, and the silence hangs on until he hears Flower and Vero speaking quietly, the receiver not angled well enough that he can make anything out.

He closes his eyes, lets the too sun warm his skin and wishes that it was a year ago. Two, even, when the idea of being a part of Flower and Vero and their family was still new, when Scarlett was just a few months old and Sid carried her around the house until she’d scream to be put down.

“Hey, we’re going to go. I love you, mon cher,” Flower says gently, like he knows how breakable Sid is feeling now.

Speaking around the lump in his throat, Sid manages, “I love you, too. Give my love to Vero and the girls.” His eyes are wet, and he’ll have to wait a few minutes before he can go back inside otherwise the guys will ask too many questions.

“You could tell me yourself, you know,” Vero pipes up, and at least she’s there for Flower. Sid hates being alone in Pittsburgh but it’s still home, it’s still better than Flower being totally alone in a new city.

“I love you,” he says, and they said it all the time even before Vegas happened, but the words have more weight to them now. When he goes to sleep, he feels it around him like a blanket in the empty house, and he wants to ask if it feels the same way for them but doesn’t know how to form the words so that they’d make sense.

She laughs a little and says, “I love you, too. We’ll let you know what’s going on out here when we know. We’re going to be alright.”

She sounds self-assured and confidant, and Sid wants to ask how she knows but manages to bite his tongue. Just for now, he’ll let himself believe it’s true.

-x-

Everyone knew that this season would take a little while to get used to. There are too many changes to the roster, and Muzz won’t look Sid in the eye and it took him too long to notice because he was trying to not look at Muzz either. Tanger and Geno, who have never been exactly quiet, are louder than they’ve ever been in the room, trying to take up space that they’re used to having someone else fill. Last year’s rookies, guys who have now seen a full season and postseason and thought they knew what to expect for this year, are trying to relearn their footing.

Sid can’t keep himself out of the box, can’t seem to find the back of the net, keeps letting his emotions get the better of him. Their PK is having to trip over themselves to deal with the powerplays he keeps giving their opponents, and Tanger purses his lips after losses and stares at him meaningfully but won’t say anything.

Geno is less quiet about it, pulls him aside one day and means well but Sid can’t hear anything above the rushing in his ears. He’s the fucking captain, he needs to get it together, and he needs to be on the ice instead of in the box. He fucking knows it, and Geno knows it, too.

“I’m working on it,” Sid snaps, too hostile, but the team has been giving him too much leeway this season and Geno keeps with that trend and doesn’t say anything about it beyond giving him a heavy look. 

Shrugging, Geno takes out his phone and flips to a new picture of Nikita, on the beach with Anna in Miami. “They’re home tomorrow, Anna wants you over for dinner this week. Says you’re too moody for me to deal with by myself.” He smirks when he says it, the little in-joke that Sid can’t help but roll his eyes at even when he knows how true it is.

“Stop gossiping about me with Anna, she tells Vero and then I get told I have to be nicer.” He stops for a moment and then tacks on, “Let me know if I need to bring anything.” 

Geno smiles at him, and Sid lets himself be hugged for a moment and then they walk back to the room in silence until Geno asks, “How’s Flower?” and Sid feels the rushing in his ears start to come back.

There hasn’t been any official word about it, but Sid knows that Flower hasn’t been back on the ice yet, knows that he feels ready and hasn’t been cleared to go back yet. He pauses and says, “He’s, uh, doing okay.” Yesterday, he got a picture of Flower finger painting with Scarlett and covered in red all on his neck and shoulder, some blue mixed on his chin. “I think Vero’s ready to send him to practice anyway; she keeps saying that she’s only used to have two kids in the house.”

It feels good to be able to talk about it with someone. Tanger and Catherine ask, of course, but they hear from Flower and Vero already, and Catherine leaves pointed silences for Sidney to talk about how he feels. Geno and Flower text, sometimes, but it’s mostly in the sporadic method that Geno uses to text everyone: new pictures of Nikita or random animals, over the summer it’s usually a combination, almost always without captions.

“Glad he’s good,” Geno says as they get back to the room. “I’ll tell you when dinner is.”

-x-

“I’ll be on the ice tomorrow,” Flower shouts on the phone the second that Sid picks up, and Sid can’t stop the shout that he lets out in response.

“Congratulations!” Sid woops, and even though he’s alone in the house he doesn’t think he’d been any quieter about it if he were somewhere else. He can’t stop smiling, but the grin spreading across his face is not match for the one that Flower is wearing, and he’s so fucking relieved. Almost a month, but Flower is going to be back on the ice tomorrow, and Sid knows what it feels like to want to beg someone to let you puts skates back on.

It feels like he can breathe easily for the first time in almost a month. Flower is fine, Flower is fine, and the doctors kept saying that these things take time but tomorrow Flower will be on the ice. “So your team can let whatever high schooler they have playing hooky go back to school?” he teases, relieved and so, so happy.

Flower laughs, and then he pushes it all out in a single breath. “We haven’t talked about games yet, but.”

There’s so much hope in that one word, anticipation and nerves and excitement bundled together. Sid tries to steady his breathing, but knows that he’s still smiling widely. “Yeah, yeah, but. I’m so happy for you.”

They stay on the phone and Sid gets passed around to Vero and the girls, and he listens to Estelle talk about making new friends and the girls that she doesn’t want to hang out with but has to see again soon. It’s always hardest to talk to Estelle through the phone, because she doesn’t like that she can see his face but that he’s not there. He doesn’t like it any better than she does, but it’s hard to explain.

Today, though, even when he’s saying his goodbyes it’s hard to think about much other than the sheer force of Marc-Andre’s joy powering through everything. Sid feels like maybe he can finally breathe again, not worried about Flower even though he knew the symptoms were never more than he could handle. The idea of concussions, concussions when it comes to Flower especially, sets him on edge. It’s something too close to him for him to not worry about; he remembers a year of feeling alone and isolated, separated from the things that he wanted the most.

Flower is okay, though. Flower is fine; Flower is going back on the ice. That’s all that matters.

That thread of joy carries him through the rest of the evening, until he settles into bed and hears the silence of the house around him. It’s empty, and it’s so quiet that he can’t stand it sometimes although he’s slowly getting used to the fact but wishes he didn’t have to. He misses the crackle of the baby monitor next to the bed even though they didn’t need it the last few months with Scarlett, and his misses Flower snoring softly with ragged breaths and Vero’s quiet laughter when she noticed that it kept Sidney up too.

He closes his eyes and does what he’s done for the past month and a half: tries to remind himself that he slept in a bed without Flower and Vero for years. Still, it hasn’t been recent, and he’s more than gotten used to being in a house that feels like home instead of wandering the house he’d built too large to ever feel full. 

When he’d first moved in, it took a few weeks for him to adjust to the consistent chaos of it. The noise and splashing of bath time, of Estelle getting ready for bed and telling him about her day, so tired that she often fell asleep halfway through. The creak of the door when Estelle couldn’t sleep and wanted one of her parents to read her another story, or the noise from the baby monitor when Scarlett needed one of them. 

The house in Vegas has all of those sounds but none of the familiarity, and the house in Pittsburgh feels right but doesn’t sound that way anymore and Sid can’t help but feel like it’s never going to feel right. 

This is their new reality, though, his family thousands of miles away, leaving Sid alone in the city he thought he’d made a home in.

-x-

One of the guys sees the picture of Flower on the ice and it’s only when they jostle Sid and tease him that he realizes how carefully they’ve been treating him since it happened. They’re his team, they shouldn’t have to worry about him this way, not when he’s the one who should be paying attention to them in that way.

It’s kind of a wake-up call, and Sid used to be better at paying attention to multiple things at a time, but he’s barely been able to focus on hockey. His point production is down, his penalty minutes are way up, and this isn’t the kind of start to the season that they should have had. They shouldn’t have to work at digging themselves out of a hole by this point in the season, and back to backs feel like a special kind of torture, but when Flower calls he’s smiling and Sid has missed that carefree look more than anything else.

Dinner at Geno’s goes the way that it usually goes nowadays, and Nikita just keeps growing faster than any baby has the right to. It reminds Sid of Scarlett a year ago, and he wonders how much the girls will have grown by the time he sees them next. It creates a pit in his stomach, but he helps Anna with salad and winces pre-emptively when he sees how large the wine glasses she gets down are. She teases him, laughing and reminding him of the time that they had to call Vero to come pick him up because he couldn’t hold his liquor.

“You keep telling her how pretty she is, won’t stop,” Anna remembers, and Sid blushes but can’t really contradict it because Vero’s shown him the video that she took at the time, Sid leaning against the doorframe and staring at her in absolute wonder.

Nikita babbles as Geno talks with him in cheerful Russian, and Sidney somehow finds himself sitting at the counter and holding Nikita as Geno takes over salad duties. Nikita keeps babbling, things that sound like a combination of nonsense and Russian, and Sid would try to talk back to him, but the only Russian he knows he learned from Geno and Gonch in the locker room. He doubts it would be considered appropriate for Geno’s one-year-old son. 

“Flower happy to be back on the ice?” Geno asks, but he surely knows the answer. Sid doesn’t know a single hockey player who likes being off the ice at all, much less for a month. 

Bouncing Nikita against him, Sid answers, “He won’t stop smiling about it, and Estelle told him if he didn’t stop his face would freeze that way.” Vero had told him about it, and Estelle had cheerfully re-enacted it for him, and Flower had scooped her up in the background and carried her around the room, laughing as he did so. Sid had watched quietly and missed them desperately, unwilling to say anything that might break the mood.

Anna giggles and reaches over to poke Nikita’s cheek as he laughs at her and claps his hands. “Yes, so smilely,” she agrees, and the smile that she wears is a touch softer when she looks over to Sidney again. “We’re glad he’s good again, back to playing. Back for the next game?”

There hasn’t been any official word, and Sid knows how quietly hopeful Flower has been about it, but he knows his own fears and he hopes that they won’t put Flower back in until they’re sure he’s ready. “Not yet, but he feels good.” He doesn’t voice his fears, that Flower is pushing himself harder than he needs to. Flower was there for all of Sid’s concussion from hell, he knows to listen to the doctors and not put too much pressure to get back out there before he’s ready. Reminding Flower of that would just start a fight, and Sid doesn’t want to learn how to fight with all this distance between them, doesn’t want to risk anything he doesn’t have to.

Geno glances over to him, and Sid knows that he isn’t doing as good of a job at masking his fears as he needs to be. “Good that he feels good. Hope he pranks Nealer soon, he texts me too often. Getting bored without Flower there to keep him in line,” he says easily, sliding the chopped onions and bell peppers into the salad bowl, and Sid can’t help but let out a breath at getting off easy.

It’s good to be with Geno and Anna, to sit and bask in their familiar banter and not feel like he needs to be an overly active participant. He listens to Anna tell stories from Miami and she and Geno both talk about their summer in Russia. Sid talks about the hockey school, a little about the weddings they went to during the offseason, shows off the most recent pictures of the girls that Vero sent of them with Play-Dough earlier.

Anna rolls her eyes and takes Nikita, steadying him on her hip as she balances the salad bowl on the other. “Yes, the Play-Dough. Shoved some in my nice carpet, didn’t you?” she asks Nikita with a rueful smile. “Have to lay down sheet now for him to play on.”

They carry on like that through dinner, and Sid is taught please and thank you in Russian as Nikita is reminded to make his requests politer. He even humors Anna and says the words himself, mangling them badly enough that Geno nearly snorts wine on the table and Anna cackles at him with glee and Nikita laughs along with them.

It’s a family dinner, loud and somewhat rambunctious, and a little on the messy side. It makes Sid miss having to bargain with Estelle to finish her vegetables and watching Scarlett to make sure she hasn’t spilled too much on the floor. He misses them, of course, but it’s good to be with Geno and Anna, to listen to their jokes and to roll his eyes when they talk in Russian purposefully and laugh at the faces he makes for Nikita.

-x-

During Sid’s concussion, the one that he thinks of as The Concussion, the one that almost took away everything, he only saw Geno and Flower for the first two months, other than Mario and Nathalie and the endless string of doctors. Maybe Tanger, although he’s never been able to figure out if that was real or a fevered kind of dream where Tanger clucked at him and made him soup before leaving again.

Geno would come by, using boredom as his thinly veiled excuse, and he put up with Sid not being able to look at screens or have too many lights on in the house. He gave mundane updates, the kind that made Sid feel like he still knew what was going on with the rest of the guys. Stories about who Flower was pranking, how many times Tanger had sworn to avenge Sid’s honor against the Capitals and the Lightning. 

Geno’s visits made Sid feel better, he remembers, but it was Flower who bought him audiobooks and told him to go home, go visit his parents. 

“The team will be here when you get back. You’re not helping anyone by sticking around right now,” Flower had told him, voice level on purpose, and Sid felt sick with the idea of admitting that he needed the time, that he wasn’t getting better yet.

Flower and Vero dropped him off at the airport, and he remembers Vero kissing his cheeks and telling him that she’d pick him up since his return flight would land during a game. “Let me do this for you,” she’d told him simply and refused to take no for an answer, Flower rolling his eyes as Sidney protested and tried to say that he’d just take a cab back. 

He’ll never be able to say that he’s happy he was concussed, but the concussion was how he got to know Vero outside of team dinners and events. That year, the year she and Marc-Andre got married, is the year that Vero swears she started falling for Sid as well even though none of them made a move for another two years. 

“This is why I didn’t want to date a hockey player,” she told him once during that time, a few months after the wedding. They’d been sitting in near-complete darkness, the only light coming from Vero’s phone, and Sid groaned when he rolled over to ask her to dim the screen. “You always run around thinking you’re invincible, and then something happens, and you find out you’re just as weak as everyone else.” Looking back, Sid knows that if he’d been able to see her, she would have been pale and shaking.

Sid knows now that Vero had been pregnant and hadn’t broke the news to anyone besides Flower, that it wouldn’t be for another month before they’d tell anyone else. She’d watched him throughout his concussion, coming over during practices because Flower was gone and she claimed to get bored of being home alone.

It’s the fear that Vero has never been able to let go of, the one that keeps her up at night when either of them are injured. She’s afraid that there will come an injury they won’t recover from, symptoms that will never go away, and Sid’s been a hockey player long enough to know that those fears aren’t unfounded. Especially being on the Penguins, seeing the kinds of injuries and illnesses that can strike without warning.

Duper’s blood clots, Tanger’s stroke, Olli’s cancer. None of those are even related to what they do on the ice, though; none of those could have been avoided with a desk job. Not like Geno’s knee and the massive scars that mark his skin, or Sid’s own titanium jaw and the memory of becoming best friends with his blender for a period of time, or even Tanger’s neck injury that took him out for half of last season. Not like the concussion that kept Sid off the roster for almost a year or the one that kept Flower out of the 2016 playoffs. 

Vero is quieter when she calls. Sid doesn’t know whether it’s just worry for Flower or if she’d be quiet anyway. They hadn’t been in Vegas long enough beforehand to set-up a baseline. She hums absently when he talks, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, just trying to let him continue the conversation before passing the phone to Flower or putting him on speaker with the girls.

He tells her, just after Flower is back on the ice but no updates have been made about when he’ll be in games, “I know you’re worried about him going back.” It’s too painful to keep stepping around it, to ignore the fear that’s been building in her ever since Marc-Andre went down.

She hums, and he thinks that’s all he’s going to get out of her before she says, “I’m always worried him. And you, of course. It’s nothing new, just more of the same.” 

There’s not much to do with that statement, because Sid thinks of Flower in Pittsburgh saying that he just wanted to play hockey. He thinks of the rush of being on the ice, knocking in a good goal through the screen, the quiet thrill and anticipation after finishing a playoff series before the next one starts. Sid loves the game because there’s nothing like hockey, and he knows that Marc-Andre feels the same. Telling Vero not to worry would be fruitless, telling her there’s no reason to would be a lie. 

“This is why I didn’t want to date a hockey player,” Vero says, unknowingly echoing her words from years before.

“Because we get hurt?” Sid presses, and some part of him knows he should let this go. But It’s impossible not to try to comfort her when she looks incredibly small, knees pulled to her chest in the office chair.

She looks up carefully, and her eyes are sharp if distant. “Because nothing is ever going to be more important to you, and I’m tired of wondering just how close second place is.” Releasing her legs, she adjusts on the chair and leans over to bring the laptop closer to her. “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have said that.”

Sid’s mouth is dry, and he doesn’t know that he could talk right now even if he could find the right words. He doesn’t know if the right words exist, if anything can help in this fragile moment. Finally, he manages, “You don’t have to apologize.” 

They watch each other in silence until there’s a muted sound on Vero’s end of the call. She looks up and smiles, motioning for someone to come in as she says, “Come on in, kiddo. Want to talk to Daddy?” Shifting the laptop back onto the desk, she reaches down and scoops up Estelle.

Estelle beams when she sees Sid, shouting, “Daddy!”

It only eases the ache in his chest slightly, and he smiles back at her as best he can. “Hey, munchkin,” he greets her, and he settles in to listen to Estelle talk about her day. When he glances at Vero, she’s looking completely at Estelle, wearing a smile that doesn’t meet her eyes and not sparing Sid a glance.

-x-

The team is… It isn’t the team he’s used to. And that’s not an excuse, or it shouldn’t be. It’s been almost three months of this team, this new team, and Sid has gotten used to adapting to new people coming in, to older guys leaving. Only now the guys who have left include Flower, and Kuni, and Duper, and it feels like the rest of the team is floundering too.

During the Tampa game, he finds the back of the net twice and lets himself sit back and relax into the feeling of the win. It’s a good win, more than just a point difference, not something they had to manage in overtime. The kind of win they needed. Kuni comes out with them to a bar, talks Tanger into buying the first round, and then sets to isolating Sid away with the core group.

“Yeah, yeah, fuck you if you think you’re doing this again next time. Shut up and drink your beer,” Kuni instructs him, pushing one of the glasses Tanger set out towards Sid’s reluctantly outstretched hand. 

It feels almost like old times, except Marc-Andre isn’t there for Sid to lean heavily on when he’s had too many. Even before they got together, Sid was always with Flower. On the plane, at bars, at dinners. It’s created a noticeable absence in his life.

“Look what you did,” Tanger scolds sometime later as he takes in the array of shot glasses that litter the table, trying to identify how many can be attributed to Sid. “He’s not in his twenties anymore, you know, he can’t drink like he used to.” He mutters something to himself in French, low enough that Sid can’t make it out, passing a glass of water across the table. 

Sid tries to prop his head up against the back of the booth and then curls towards Geno after a moment. “I can drink,” he protests, but he takes the glass of water without complaint and gulps it down halfway before stopping. “This doesn’t even taste like alcohol, what’s in this?”

Geno heaves a long-suffering sigh and presses the water back into his hand. “Is water, Sid,” he says, glaring weakly at Tanger. “Didn’t try, you heard him ask for shots. Even rookies gone back by now.”

“I’d rather he be drunk than sad. Is it always like this now?” Kuni asks, shooting worried glances at his former captain. “I mean, we all knew it’d be hard. But this seems… I called the other week, he wasn’t this bad then.” He looks around at Geno, who is watching Sid with pity evident on his face, and Tanger, who has his lips pursed together in silence.

Finally, Tanger leans over to adjust Sid, who has listed over on Geno’s side uselessly. “Alright, Cap, time for some straight talk. What’s going on? Flower and Vero are in Vegas, we get that, but you’re worse than usual. Did something happen?” he presses gently, throwing and arm over Sid’s shoulders and bringing him in against his side.

They all wait for a moment as Sid blinks up at them slowly, looking away from the empty water glass. “I miss them,” he says morosely, and that’s about all that Tanger can take before he stands up, heaving Sid with him.

“Alright, time to get you to bed. Vero’s going to call to tell me off for not taking better care of you,” Tanger announces, and the rest of the guys start grabbing their jackets to head out too.

They say goodbye to Kuni before he gets in his cab, Sid clinging to him in the hug maybe longer than usual, and from there Tanger and Geno get in their own cab with Sid between them, leaning on them heavily as they sit.

He’s quiet through the ride, pillowing his head on Tanger’s shoulder, and Tanger knows that he’s definitely too soft to move him. When they pull up to Sid’s stop, they have to pull him out of the cab carefully

“I’ve got him from here,” Tanger says at Sid’s door, waving Geno off, who goes more than willingly. “Come on, my drunk friend. I’ll get you another water, and then I will leave you to your hangover.”

“Sorry,” Sid tells him, sinking gratefully onto the couch once they’re through the door. “I just… Sorry. I’ll be better, I’ll get better.” He says the words with almost no emotion, like it’s something he’s been told before.

Coming back from the kitchen with a bottle of water, Tanger has half a mind to ask who said he needed to be better in the first place. “You don’t need to be better, okay? You can be sad and upset and pissed without having to move on immediately. Just talk to someone about it. Vero and Flower, hell, or me and Cath. Even G and Anna. We want you to be alright, but it’s okay if it takes a while.”

Sid nods after a moment, seeming to accept that. He stays silent for long enough that Tanger thinks that might be it, and he’s grabbing his jacket to get ready to go when Sid finally asks, “What do I do if they break up with me?”

It’s such an absurd question that Tanger doesn’t even consider it, can’t help the breath of laughter that gets out before he realizes that Sid is completely serious, biting his lip and looking anywhere in the room except for directly at Tanger. 

“Hey, you know that’s not going to happen,” Tanger starts, wondering where this kind of question is even coming from. “Flower and Vero were in love with you since before you started dating; you’re being ridiculous if you think that a little distance is going to change that.” He pauses before adding, “I can’t imagine a scenario where they’d ever break up with you. Come on, Sid, they’d never.”

If possible, Sid looks even more distant now. He nods, but it just looks like an absent-minded gesture, not a source of self-assurance. Tanger feels suddenly adrift, wondering what’s happened that he doesn’t know about, whether Cath has heard anything from Vero before dismissing it immediately. She would have told him, and he would have said something, or maybe bullied Sid into telling him himself. Sid nods again, holding himself very still, and Tanger wonders how long this has been going on that he hasn’t noticed it for. 

Sitting carefully on the couch, Tanger takes the water when Sid passes it back to him. “I know it’s tough, and I can’t imagine how hard it is on your guys, but… It’s going to be okay.” He hesitates and stands up, watching as Sid does the same, a little unsteady on his feet. “Get some sleep, we can talk tomorrow.”

Sid reaches out and presses against the railing for the stairs, but he pauses and turns back slowly. “Thanks, Kris. I appreciate it.”

Tanger stands by the door and watches until Sid’s halfway up the stairs, and he uses the spare key to lock the door behind him. He orders an Uber and leans against the door, sending out a final text while he waits.

-x-

Sid groans and rolls over, bringing up the blanket with him. His phone buzzes again, more insistently, and he reaches over to pat at it before giving in and pulling it towards him, squinting as he opens his eyes.

_3 new text messages._

He slides it open to find they’re all from Duper, and he winces as another one comes in. They’re all variations on the same thing, that he needs to call soon and he’s an idiot. So, nothing new.

The most recent one reads _You have read receipts on, call me or I’m calling you_.

Sure enough the phone rings after it, and Sid winces before he slides to answer it. “Hey, Duper,” he says reluctantly, trying to think about what he could have done to warrant this kind of morning. He remembers seeing Kuni off and Tanger unlocking the door when they got back from the bar, and he remembers Tanger getting him water, but nothing sticks out that would necessitate Duper having to call him this early.

“So what’s this Tanger tells me about you being worried about becoming single again? Because that might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, and the other night Lola was trying to convince me that her teeth clean themselves so she doesn’t need to brush them anymore,” Duper starts off, not bothering with any pleasantries.

Blood running suddenly cold, Sid freezes before forcing himself to breathe in slow, even breaths. “I’m not _worried_ ,” he tries, but it’s hard to make himself talk about it. “He didn’t need to start the phone tree or whatever this is.” He really doesn’t want to spend the morning fielding calls from well-meaning friends, because talking about it at all is something he’d like to avoid, much less talking about it with several people.

Duper scoffs, the sound familiar, and Sid misses him suddenly, like a punch to the gut, the kind of feeling he thought he’d been getting used to. “Too late, I think MacKinnon is up next if I can’t get it out of you. You’re just lucky he didn’t call Flower, or else you might have a real problem on your hands.”

He’s right, and the thought is startling to imagine Flower receiving the kind of message that Tanger surely sent to Duper last night. Sid closes his eyes and is grateful for small blessings, because even if this is going to take some time it will involved infinitely less damage control than convincing Flower and Vero that he’s fine. “Okay, well, I’ll text Nate that I’m fine and he doesn’t need to call. And I don’t need whoever you guys had lined up after him, either, because, like I said, I’m fine.”

“Weber is after him, and you won’t get rid of him that easily. Maybe Mac still has some of that hero worship in him, but Webs roomed with you so he knows you for the freak you are. Yeah, and Jack is after him, so caving with me is probably you’re best option. And if you actually were fine, then I wouldn’t be calling you this early, would I? I would call at a reasonable hour. So tell me what happened.”

Sid swallows and sits up against the headboard, letting his head hit the wall gently. He doesn’t remember the specifics of what he must have said, but he thinks he can guess at it. “I don’t actually think Flower and Vero would break up with me, so stop worrying.” 

Duper takes offense at that, lets a few curses fly, and it’s at that point that Sid realizes he misses hearing French. He wants to ask him to repeat it, which is more than crazy, and he manages to talk himself out of asking while tuning back into what Duper’s saying. 

“…They never even considered anyone else until you came along, do you really think that they’re ever going to let you go?” He sighs heavily, clearly weighing the merits of what he has to say next before seemingly deciding it’s worth it before asking, “Sid, what happened?”

It might be something about the tone that’s clearly pitying, but it’s more likely the reminder that it’s never been anyone but Flower and Vero for him, too. Sid caves, closing his eyes and squeezing the phone tighter. “I don’t know that it’s working. I’m not there, and the girls are growing up, and every time I see them it hurts. Marc still isn’t doing well enough to get out to practices, and I don’t know how to get him to talk about it, and I think Vero feels like we keep putting our careers before the family,” he admits in a rush.

There’s a few moments of silence, and Duper tells him, “When I came to Pittsburgh and Carole-Lyne and was still in Atlanta, pregnant with Zoe, I couldn’t stop worrying about it. And I felt guilty, because I was putting hockey first, even though I didn’t necessarily want to. Two months, every day that I wasn’t there was worse, and I remember thinking that I’d never understand why people did long distance relationships because it was so hard.”

Sid can’t stop the hollow laugh that he lets out, but it’s short-lived. “Yeah, well, I don’t know if it gets easier.”

Duper lets out an audible breath, and then he says, “I don’t think it does. Long-distance is hard work, and I’d be surprised if you could find anyone who says otherwise. It’s not easy, it’s just worth it when you have someone to talk to at the end of the day. It was hard to leave on road trips, coming back and one of the kids had reached another milestone I didn’t get to see, but you already know that. And I’m sorry it’s like this, but you knew what was going to happen after Flower decided.” He sounds sorry, though, and pitying, kind of like he did throughout Sid’s concussion, and Sid wishes he didn’t remember that so starkly.

Sid stays quiet before saying quietly, “It’s worth it.” He can’t deny that, that he doesn’t love when Flower and Vero call, just that it’s so hard when the time comes to hang up.

“I’m sorry they aren’t in Pittsburgh anymore, Sid. I wish… I wish they were still there, or I was still there, or something.”

Dismissive, Sid answers, “You’re with your family… It’s where I wish I could be.”

A few beats of silence pass between them, and then Duper says to lighten the mood, “Well, at least you caved early. Our reserves included two of the big guns, one of whom is Taylor. I figured your sister calling you up to tell you off about your personal life would be motivating enough.” He chuckles a little, mostly forced.

Sid tries to picture it and has to admit that he’d probably gotten in gear pretty quickly. “Who was your other big gun?” he asks, mostly out of curiosity.

“Oh, no one special, really. Just your boss and former landlord, no big deal. Le Magnifique really would have been a last resort,” Duper answers, hanging up immediately after.

Closing his eyes and shaking his head, Sid opens his contacts and flips to favorites, thumb hovering over Marc-Andre’s name briefly. It takes him a moment to remember what’s important about the date, but he presses down when he remembers it.

It rings and rings, and it’s only when it gets picked up that Sid thinks about the three hour time difference and how early Duper called. Flower answers, voice ragged as he asks, “Sid, what’s wrong? What happened?”

Swallowing, Sid admits, embarrassed, “I forgot the time difference, nothing’s wrong. Sorry I scared you, I’ll call back later. Like when you’re actually awake.”

Flower’s breathing evens out slowly as he laughs, clearly amused. “I’m awake, I’m awake. That’s one way to get the blood pumping. Go ahead, mon cher, tell me what couldn’t wait.”

“Are you sure?” Sid asks hesitantly, waiting for Flower to hum his consent before starting out, powering through his embarrassment as he goes. “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you…”

He finishes the song and goes quiet, and he can practically feel the tips of his ears getting pinker. “I was just thinking about you, and I thought I’d call. And then I thought I’d sing to you, but Vero will sound a lot better when she does. Plus, it probably won’t be dark out when she does it.”

Flower laughs, not mockingly, just warm and pleased, and Sid wishes that the sound was coming from somewhere closer than thousands of miles away. “I liked you singing it, just as much as I’ll like it when Vero and the girls do it later. I’m glad you called, I miss you.”

“I miss you, too,” Sid answers automatically, and he draws the blankets tighter around himself as he looks at the spread of unoccupied mattress surrounding him. He thinks about not saying anything, and then he thinks that not saying anything is what’s made things worse. “I wish I could be there with you guys. Or you guys could be here with me, the house feels a lot bigger than it used to. A lot emptier, too,” he whispers carefully.

“Oh, mon cher,” and pity from Flower is so much harder to take than it was with Duper, “you know we want to be there. I can’t imagine being home anywhere else. Do you want me to wake Vero?”

Sid makes himself actually think about it, but she needs all the rest that she can get so that she can handle the girls and it isn’t like she’s been sleeping well since Flower’s been injured. He’ll talk to her soon, anyway. “No, it’s fine, but could we maybe talk a little longer?” It’s harder than he’d like it to be to ask for that much, but he knows he needs to start saying what he’s thinking about and asking for what he needs.

“Of course,” Flower agrees without hesitation, and there’s the soft sound of a door closing behind him. “Is there anything specific you want to talk about?”

A million different things come to mind, none of them important enough that Sid wants to actually talk about. Flower’s just woken up, and Vero’s still asleep, not to mention the slight hangover Sid has, and they should talk about those things another time, when they’re all alert enough to handle it. “Not really. I just wanted to say that I love you.”

Flower makes a soft noise, almost wounded, and he responds, “I love you, too. I’m sorry the house is too big. I’m sorry we’re not there.”

He tries to imagine Flower in bed next to him, Vero down the hall getting the girls ready for the day, but the bed is cold and there’s no noise in the house. “I’m sorry you’re not here, too,” Sid whispers, closing his eyes and tilting his head back against the headboard once again. It’s nothing less than the truth.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm at helpless-in-sleep at tumblr if you feel the need to visit!


End file.
